Don’t Hit The Sleep Snooze Button

You should still get up at the same time you do every other morning, even if it’s the weekend.

A consistent wake-up time is key for maintaining your circadian rhythms. Sleep deprivation affects the patterns in your physiological processes, such as your energy, immunity, and metabolism. Sleeping late throws your body clock off for the rest of the day. Consequently when your regular bedtime rolls around, you’re setting up for another night of insufficient sleep.

Get Out

Get outdoors! Expose yourself to natural light, which cues your body clock to suppress production of melatonin, the hormone that makes you sleepy. As a result, you become more alert.

Sunlight could boost your mood too. It triggers the release of the feel-good hormone serotonin, which may help you feel a little less harried on a hectic morning.

Go Easy On The Caffeine

If coffee is part of your morning ritual, go ahead and sip. But cut yourself off from caffeine by lunchtime. Don’t keep drinking the whole day.

Drinking coffee in the afternoon can make it harder to fall asleep that night: A 2013 study in the Journal of Clincial Sleep Medicine found that a dose of caffeine consumed even six hours before bedtime can keep a person awake.

Take A Short Nap

Collapsing on the couch for an epic afternoon nap seems like the most obvious thing to do to “catch up” on lost sleep. But if you slip into a deep sleep, you may wake up feeling extra groggy. And even worse, a long nap will disrupt your normal sleep-wake cycle.

If you need a rest mid-day, take a 25-minute power snooze around 1 pm, the experts say. That’s just enough time to leave you refreshed without impacting your nighttime sleep.

Fight The Mid-Day Slump

When you feel your energy dipping at mid-day, a bit of activity will get you back on track. A study published in April 2017 in the journal Physiology and Behavior found that 10 minutes of stair-walking boosted energy levels more than the caffeine in a can of soda. So leave the office and take a 10 minute take down to the ground floor and back up again. Or get your blood pumping with a brisk walk around the block.

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Barry G

barry@skycaremedia.com

Barry graduated from City University of New York and holds a Ph.D. in Physiological Psychology.

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